


Keeper

by Liana Mir (scribblemyname)



Category: Original Work
Genre: First Kiss, First Time, Get Together, M/M, Mer/Human Relationship, merfolk, saving someone's life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2020-12-13 20:34:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21003761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/pseuds/Liana%20Mir
Summary: All the merfolk were curious. It wasn't something unique to Mourning Song. They all sang, rejoicing in the wind and rain and storm together, riding the waves over and under, and all of them had their own tendencies to stop and turn aside to interesting bits of flotsam and jetsam. Or something other than a bit of drifting wood.





	Keeper

**Author's Note:**

  * For [plastics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plastics/gifts).

"Novo," said Mother, her normally golden face pale to almost white. "Go fetch in the dory. We can't afford to lose it."

Novo was a dutiful son and obeyed directly. He ran off down the shore, the ferocious wind whipping his long dark hair into his eyes, so it stung. But he didn't slow, feet sure and confident on the great boulders and small rocks of the coast he'd grown up on.

Mother disappeared into the tower, and he knew she would be climbing up to the top of the lighthouse to light the lamp and keep it burning.

There was a storm brewing, but it should be hours yet before it became deadly. More than long enough to fetch their fishing boat and row it from the rocky beach around to the tiny, well-protected harbor they kept it in when they weren't fishing. He might lose the catch, but as Mother had said, it was more important to keep the boat.

* * *

All the merfolk were curious. It wasn't something unique to Mourning Song. They all sang, rejoicing in the wind and rain and storm together, riding the waves over and under, and all of them had their own tendencies to stop and turn aside to interesting bits of flotsam and jetsam.

Or something other than a bit of drifting wood.

Mourning Song hesitated only a moment before darting through the choppy weathers, feeling the storm singing through his body, but pressing onward toward the broken remains of a small fishing boat and a dark shape his song insisted was flesh.

Mourning Song snatched the body up and broke the surface. Overhead, a bright, persistent light broke through the darkness of the storm. Shore was close, and the shape in his arms was human, limp but not without strength, eyelashes fluttering as he coughed and gasped for air.

He was alive then. Good. With a few sharp cries, Mourning Song sped toward the smaller, sheltered harbor, careful to keep the human's head above water.

A few startled cries answered him from his clan, and the playfulness in the waters receded. The waters grew quieter, shallower as he pulled his burden into the natural harbor around the other side of the lighthouse rock, then up onto the rocky beach itself.

The storm was not so loud now, the lightning coming further apart, thunder slowly rolling out to quiet again. He gave the human a good thump on the back with his hand, glad to see no water gushing out, for all it nearly laid the human flat. 

"You alive?" he demanded, drawing a startled, wide-eyed gaze as the human raised his head and stared. He wasn't bad looking, this human—long black hair, golden brown skin, and fine features with a slenderness that made Mourning Song think of quicksilver schools of fish.

The human coughed again and answered, "Who are you?"

* * *

The merman pushed himself carefully back into the water most of the way, and Novo tried not to look like a gaping, wide-eyed fisherman.

The merman was beautiful, surprisingly young. He looked Novo's age and grimaced as he brushed back his long dark hair. He was not at all slender like they showed merfolk in the movies or art. His body looked thick and powerful, and when Novo remembered the feel of those arms around him, he knew it wasn't just appearance. He coughed up the rest of the water (perhaps the rest of his lungs, he thought) and croaked out his thanks.

"You saved me," he says, wide-eyed. "I— Thank you."

The merman's tail twitched, fluke hitting the shallow water and raising spray. "I'm the grandchild of Calling Gently of the Deepwater Clan." His voice was surprisingly deep and warm, and he leaned forward enough to show curiosity gleaming in his bright eyes. His throat made some sort of low, chirping sound.

Novo shut his mouth. Not a gaping fisherman. Right. Then he frowned. "But what's your name?"

The grandchild of Calling Gently of the Deepwater Clan suddenly looked angry and slapped him with his tail—hard enough for Novo to discover he had not in fact coughed up all the water he could have and his throat could feel more raw still, his back more achey.

"What was that for?!" He peeled himself off the beach and glared.

The merman crossed his arms, nose even rising in the air. "Teaching you manners."

"That was manners," Novo growled back.

"You don't ask strangers their name," the merman countered with the speed of reflex. He dropped his arms and slipped forward again as much as he could without pulling himself up onto the rock. "Who are you?" he asked in a curious tone.

"Uh..." Novo thought about how the merman had answered. "I'm the son of the Lightkeeper Aleston." His mother's name was known to many, and Calling Gently was surely a name.

The merman merely looked thoughtful. "Lightkeeper. Ah, and what will you call me?" He grinned, his face breaking out into an almost roguish delight, and Novo stared like a gaping, wide-eyed fisherman no one could take anywhere.

A long, long pause as he tried to order his thoughts. "Lifekeeper," he said slowly.

The merman blinked, clearly surprised.

"Well, you did save my life," Novo added.

The merman looked thoughtful and grimaced, but nodded acceptance shortly. "You are a strange little human!"

Novo sputtered. "I'm not little! Or strange!"

"Yes, you are." Lifekeeper reached out and grabbed Novo's head by the hair, dunking it in the water with surprising ease and swiftness—he really was strong—then brought him up again.

Novo twisted in Lifekeeper's grip, trying to get rid of all the water, and glared. "What was that for?"

"Calling me such a thing." Lifekeeper grinned and dropped Novo again.

"Well, you're strange," Novo retorted, crossing his arms. He squinted. Come to think of it, "You don't have any gills."

"Huh?!" Lifekeeper scowled. "Why would I have gills? I'm a mammal, not a fish!"

"You are?" Novo's school didn't seem to know that, but wasn't that an entirely human classification. "How do you know that?" he asked, struck by the sudden idea of merfolk school.

"You're not the first of your kind we've talked to," Lifekeeper replied with exaggerated patience. "How do you think I know your language? That's what you call all of us air-breathers."

"Oh? What does your language sound like?"

Every answer raised another question, but what better opportunity to ask then when the both of them were less than a foot away at the edge of the shore in the most sheltered bit of beach and both eyeing each other with equal, intense curiosity.

Novo suddenly realized the wind was cold but barely whistling. The dark waves were quiet, and the storm no longer drenching him with more than a light mist.

A low, bright note of song rose slowly and mingled with the keen of the wind. Novo blinked at the beauty of the song as it rose and fell, nearly pitched forward as he leaned toward it, before it suddenly cut off and he was shoved flat on his back with a hard thump against an uneven rock bed.

"Stop! Blasted human! This is why we don't sing around you!" The merman was hovering above him again, deep scowl etched on his face, glaring darkly.

Novo smiled and Lifekeeper's eyes went wide.

"Already saving me again?" Novo asked.

Lifekeeper stared a moment longer, then slugged him in the shoulder with a fist that felt very human, and disappeared back into the water.

Novo lay there a while longer, feeling the ache from that last punch, feeling the sore pain throughout his whole body from the pummeling of the ocean. They'd lost the dory, he realized through the mute numbness of his body. Lost the dory and the storm and somehow gained a merman. Maybe.

Merfolk didn't stay in one place too long.

He peeled himself slowly off the beach, stumbled to his feet, and made his way back to the lighthouse where his mother would be waiting with a worried gleam in her dark eyes and a no-nonsense grimness to her straight mouth. She'd strip off his wet clothes, bandage what needed to be bandaged, and spare him admonishment for failing in his task.

The squall had been sudden, growing into full-blown intensity far too quickly. There should have been enough time.

* * *

Aleston did all her son had expected she would, but she paused before leaving him in the bedroom.

"Did you see any whales?" she asked.

Her son looked curious but shook his head.

"Any..." But she clenched her fist, couldn't quite say it.

Novo looked down at his own hands, studying them with a ferocity they didn't merit. "I saw a merman. He pulled me out of the water."

Ah.

She considered both the storm's arrival and its end, her son's being tossed in the sea and being fished out again. "I suppose they'll be staying a while," she said aloud.

Novo glanced up in surprise. Merfolk weren't known for staying put.

"We'll need offerings." She'd find what was necessary and leave them at the shore.

* * *

Mother wasn't wrong. They stayed.

It appeared to be an entire clan, if a small one, settled into the greater harbor and causing little difficulty with their presence. Fishermen from the village considered it great luck, and sometimes they would drive the schools of fish into the harbor, take their own fill, and leave the rest where the nets were thickest.

Most had little direct interaction with humans, but Mother and others among the village would leave gifts at the shoreline of food, shells, and sometimes tools or money. Novo never asked what they used them for. He suspected the merfolk wouldn't hunt in such a generous manner if they weren't trying to return the favor.

Novo wasn't the lightkeeper yet, and somehow, he found himself sometimes standing at the edge of a rocky beach as far out as he could go and staring at the water for signs of a particular playful, dark-haired merman, whose favorite thing to do seemed to be surprising Novo by a sudden leap from the water and drenching Novo abruptly in the aftermath, then giggling like mad until Novo dove in to play with him.

It was ridiculous. Novo could barely win if he stayed on the land, but he certainly couldn't when he was in the water.

Lifekeeper dragged him under and pulled him along and even once allowed him to ride on his back. "If you kick me, I will kill you," he threatened, only half in jest, and carried Novo to the tiny islet he'd wanted to see, where no one really went.

"It belongs to my family," Lifekeeper said, dumping him off on the rock.

"Gently!"

"My name's not gently, now off with you, and explore if you like." Lifekeeper disappeared back under the water.

The islet was tiny, just a long finger of rock, overgrown with moss and lichens with a long shelf of sea shells and what looked like carved benches just at the edge of the water on one side. Novo leaned forward and saw tools among the shells, and he envisioned a row of merfolk settled on the benches, tails hanging in the ocean.

"It's amazing," he said aloud.

"Isn't it?" Lifekeeper surged from the water, pulling himself up by his arms onto one of the benches, and grinned, trailing his tail fins just like a kid might kick their feet. "I always like it when we come here."

Novo carefully maneuvered along the slick rock to join him. Lifekeeper blinked at him, but Novo just grinned back as if this was any kind of ordinary, to sit side by side, human and merfolk, letting the heat of their bodies fill the space between them.

Lifekeeper blushed. "We should head back."

Novo allowed himself to be talked back onto Lifekeeper's back and taken back to his own shore.

* * *

When Mourning Song discovered Lightkeeper's books—_books!_—he insisted Lightkeeper do his studies by the shore where Mourning Song could look over his shoulder and study with him, supplying his own answers.

"Get mine graded too!" he ordered enthusiastically, only for Lightkeeper to give him a funny look.

"You are strange," Lightkeeper muttered, perhaps with a hint of fondness in his eyes, but that was ridiculous.

Mourning Song reached up and dunked Lightkeeper's head in the water, careful not to splash the books, and ignored Lightkeeper's sputtering protests. "Make books out of something else. You don't make anything waterproof," he muttered.

It wasn't entirely true. But humans were stingy with their knowledge. They didn't store it in anything that merfolk could easily share.

"I'll be sure to mention it to the printer," Lightkeeper muttered back, scowling with his arms crossed, hair dripping all over his clothes.

Not that Mourning Song cared the way Lightkeeper kept insisting he should. A little water never hurt anyone.

* * *

They spent summer and winter together, another spring, long enough for the little ones to grow into gangly young adults and the clan to feed and grow strong. Long enough for the human and the merman to grow into close, fast friends.

* * *

Novo was sitting out on the pier of the greater harbor, legs hanging into the water, almost sunset when he finally felt the water move around him before Lifekeeper emerged and leaned his arms on the wood. It wasn't an awful long wait, but it felt like it.

Lifekeeper brushed his hair out of his eyes and turned a curious gaze on Novo. Usually he didn't come out this late in the evenings, having more than enough chores for Mother.

"Mother's retiring from the King's Service of the Seas to return inland," Novo said without preamble. He was still a little surprised by everything, despite the preparations of the last few weeks. "There's a little cottage she grew up in with a garden behind it."

Lifekeeper blinked. His eyes turned suddenly worried. "Will you leave?"

"The Service has agreed to make me the next Lightkeeper." Novo leaned a little forward to study the expression on Lifekeeper's face as he asked, "Will you leave?", a little worried himself. It had been a year. Surely, it was time.

Lifekeeper's face went neutral, giving away little. He answered flatly, "The family will be moving up coast to feed. We're overgrazing these waters." He brightened. "But I'll be near enough to visit. We like these waters and the harbor here."

"I didn't think the merfolk stayed so long in one place," Novo said quietly.

Lifekeeper shrugged. Overgrazing was just one reason a clan needed to move around regularly. "There's an upcoming clans gathering," he said, sounding as brooding as Novo had a moment ago.

The topic seemed abrupt but Novo could follow the thought from true migration to visiting elsewhere. "I heard clans gathered up every so often."

Lifekeeper muttered something so low, Novo couldn't even make it out.

"Huh?" Novo looked closer. Lifekeeper was rather red. Was he blushing?

"We can hardly mate with family," Lifekeeper said louder. So he _was_ blushing.

Novo laughed.

Lifekeeper slugged his knee.

"Ow. You keep forgetting how strong you are." Novo rubbed over his offended kneecap. "That hurts."

"You don't have to come when the clans gather," Lifekeeper mumbled, suddenly striking Novo with a meaning he hadn't initially thought of at all.

"Isn't it way out there?" he gestured vaguely toward deeper waters. Mating season. Novo shouldn't have anything to do with mating season. He hadn't even thought about it, or what it would mean if Lifekeeper participated, or how he felt about that.

He didn't like the idea of Lifekeeper going out there and finding a mate.

But Lifekeeper just shrugged. "The season is the season. Clans gathering is a clans gathering." He looked up into Novo's face, bright-eyed and intent. "You don't have to come."

Novo closed his mouth and suppressed a gulp. "I wouldn't know how."

Lifekeeper studied him for a long, long time, then smiled suddenly—not at all his usual smile, even if didn't quite seem insincere. "That's all right then."

* * *

"So you're the Lightkeeper now?" Novo's cousin Eilla asked, kicking her feet in the water.

Another conversation on the pier, this time with visiting family, helping him settle in, just as they'd helped Mother move out. He had missed the coast while helping her settle back in to her childhood home, and it was good to be sitting here again, breathing in the ocean scent and salt and spray, watching gulls circle overhead with bright cries in the evening light.

Novo agreed with a short nod. Mother had moved to a warmer climate in her retirement, leaving her grown son to keep the light. She'd never really asked about his teenage playmate or the family of merfolk that continued to frequent the area long after many had assumed they'd migrate onward. It was considered good luck to harbor merfolk, even if a sudden appearance was considered bad.

He'd never asked about that either.

"I'm the Lightkeeper now," he agreed, glancing up the familiar stone structure and the gleaming brightness at its height. He'd lit the lamp before they went down to the shore. Soon he would go in again and make sure that all was still well.

In the distance, a tailfin broke the water, and Eilla gasped. "A whale!" she said, hands clasped together.

She didn't often visit.

Novo didn't correct her. He just smiled and said, "A fin for good luck in the new year, yes?" and raised his hand to wave at what could only be his friend.

* * *

They had barely spoken since Novo took on his new duties, and Novo didn't make a habit anymore of racing down into bad weather when he didn't have to.

This bad weather seemed to rise a little too quickly, a little too familiar to a long ago day. He started the familiar motions of preparation while not thinking too hard on why it felt unsettling.

* * *

Stormcallers, the merfolk called themselves. Not because their presence _always_ heralded a storm, but...

There was something warm and vibrant and perfect in their song as they poured over and under the waves as one. The family song blended into a chorus that resonated through Mourning Song's body. He sang without even thinking, just feeling, as the waters grew choppy and moved with their migration. The skies overhead followed the magnetic pulse of the water and music, the sunlight growing dark, filtered through stormclouds.

Wind pressed at their backs as they went and rain began to fall.

A flash of lightning with the arias of their song, another roll of thunder with the rumble in their throats. He slapped the water with his tail, rolled under a wave, let it sing within him, wild and _home_ in a way nothing else was.

Not nothing.

It almost dragged him out of the chorus, the thought of another being that made him laugh and growl in frustration and want to drag that one under the water to keep him close forever.

_Not everyone of the merfolk drown humans in storms,_ he'd told Lightkeeper once, both sides of their people full of stereotypes and false beliefs about the other.

Mourning Song's song broke abruptly as he pulled away.

A hesitance and pause, at least one sister gently tugging at his arm, another looking concerned. He shook them off gently, an apologetic click.

They let him go, knowing it must be important.

It was.

It was more important than he'd ever given it credit for being.

* * *

The storm had been sudden, and Novo had initially been hard put to sound all of the storm warnings and light the lamp in its housing at the top of the tower before darkness covered the sea. There were ships out there, and he was busy using the small radio installed last year to communicate with at least those he knew were coming in.

There was only one time a storm had moved in this quickly, but it had slowed again and quieted much sooner than this one.

He fielded one return call, perfunctory, from a King's freighter turning in at an earlier harbor to avoid the storm altogether. He didn't reach everyone he contacted. He kept a firm eye on the lamp to brush away any obstruction from the glass, even in the form of fine dust.

And then he looked down toward the sea and gasped.

A small light, as from a fishing boat. Had one of the villagers been caught out by the suddenness of the storm?

The light would keep shining.

He set the radio to the automatic storm warning and raced down the stairwell toward the rescue gear closet at the bottom.

* * *

Novo followed that small light out into the storm, rowing with a strength born of years of practice and experience. He recognized the prow as he came close. Dorrin's boat.

"Dorrin!" he called over the howling winds.

They signaled between each other, casting a line to help Novo draw him along toward safe harbor. He breathed easy again when Dorrin's boat rounded the corner into the sheltered bay—right before his own boat must have hit a rock and he was flung off into watery darkness.

* * *

"We should stop meeting like this." Lifekeeper's gently smiling eyes were the first thing Novo saw when he opened his eyes carefully with a groan.

The storm had quieted. It was late afternoon light, soon to be evening, and Lifekeeper's arms were around him, seawater rising almost to Novo's neck.

Never. We should never stop meeting like this. He didn't tell Lifekeeper he didn't want to stop meeting like this, stop feeling these strong arms around him like this, stop seeing those eyes looking at him fondly. Novo let his head drop to Lifekeeper's strong shoulder. "I love you."

Lifekeeper's body went very still for a moment, then he slapped his tail and propelled them to the shore.

He dropped Novo unceremoniously, not an unusual occurrence, but it made Novo groan again. Lifekeeper was looking angry again, tightlipped and quiet. His tail slapped the water, spraying them both, and a low rumble sang through like an undercurrent.

Novo lay back on the rock, too tired to say more. He loved the sound of Lifekeeper's language. He knew Lifekeeper was angry, but he was _here_, and that was enough for just now.

"Lightkeeper! Stay awake, you ingrate!"

"I'm quite grateful," Novo replied indignantly.

Lifekeeper was sudden, startling as he pushed himself out of the water and threw himself over Novo, holding himself above by his arms. "Then stop falling in the water," he ordered testily.

He leaned down before Novo could answer—could do more than open his eyes wide like a gaping naive fisherman—and kissed him with a ferocity as startling as every other sudden thing he did.

Lifekeeper pulled away, brushed Novo's hair out of his face, and then kissed him again.

Kissing Lifekeeper was like breathing in water. Novo's lungs seemed to seize, he felt hot all over, and he thought he saw stars. He didn't ever want to stop.

"Lightkeeper." The merman's voice was breathless as he pulled off just enough to push Novo over onto his front and press him down with his body.

He was heavy and powerful and knowing that he should be finding some mermaid for this, not a human, not a human _man_, didn't even dent the sudden dryness in Novo's throat, the sudden need with which he reached backward to grasp what he could of Lifekeeper. The skin was clearly part of his tail, thick and rubbery, but it drew a sharp breath above Novo, and a hint of trill in the back of Lifekeeper's throat before his teeth were on the back of Novo's neck, and the scrape of his teeth sent pleasure and pain rocketing down Novo's spine.

_You don't have to come,_ he'd said, blushing but asking in his own way, even if he wasn't asking now.

Novo answered with his body, with arching back into Lifekeeper's touch, in struggling to remove the barriers of clothing between them, in gasping and shivering with tension when he felt the thickness of Lifekeeper's arousal above him but not saying no.

Lifekeeper was huge and no denying it, far larger than any of the other men Novo had seen in communal showers or baths. Novo wondered to himself if he could even handle it, but he wanted like he'd never wanted anything before in his life, body hungry for each touch of Lifekeeper's hands, each bite and scrape of his teeth, and the friction as they moved.

Lifekeeper made a strangled groaning sound and then Novo felt hands on his thighs, bruising grip sliding in close against his cock and balls and feeling out every centimeter of his skin as Novo ground down against the unforgiving rocks under the blanket of his clothes and moaned shamelessly in return. Lifekeeper didn't slow in his exploration, just thoroughly familiarized himself with Novo's anatomy, before pressing his fingers in firmly where Novo had never dreamed of fingers going.

He gasped, blinking back tears. It hurt at first, but Lifekeeper kept moving, kept tracing out the confines of Novo's body with his fingers and it started to feel strange and good as he kept going. He wasn't so rough, just relentless, and without hesitation.

The hardness against Novo's leg made him suddenly grateful Lifekeeper hadn't just sank inside him without thinking of their body's differences first.

The assault on his senses went on, Lifekeeper's fingers inside him, his mouth on the back of Novo's shoulders and neck, the weight and salty scent of him above, and then finally, Novo could start to relax into the touch and moan with mounting pleasure. It swelled inside him like a tide, filling him to the brim before abruptly Lifekeeper pulled his fingers away and Novo reached back blindly only to have his hand smacked down.

A blinding moment of whimpering need, then Novo felt something else at his entrance, the full thickness of Lifekeeper's cock. He whimpered again, desperately wanting, desperately worried at how much wider it felt than the fingers. Lifekeeper was going to split him apart.

And he did. Slowly, so agonizingly slowly as pain and pleasure bloomed in equal measure through Novo's body, but somehow, they managed not to break him before finally, they were joined together and Novo was so full, he couldn't keep his eyes from watering, couldn't keep from moaning aloud at the feeling. "Lifekeeper," he gasped out, clenching his hands in the collar of his coat.

Lifekeeper seemed to take it as encouragement, moaning hot and breathless against Novo's neck as he began to move, and it was too much, so much bursting through him, hot and intense and _full._ Novo let go of trying to think, just let himself feel everything and let go into nothing but the pain and the pleasure and the burning waves of need.

* * *

At last it was over, but neither of them seemed much inclined to move. Lifekeeper had settled half in and out of the water, arms around Novo's waist and holding him close and warm. Novo had pulled his coat half on top of himself and stayed lying against the rest of his clothes where they were spread over the rocks.

"What's your real name?" he asked quietly, deciding that no one in the whole world could think them strangers at this point.

Lifekeeper breathed in for a long moment, then breathed out a long, mournful, delicate note. The note was beautiful and made Novo want to cry. "Mourning Song," Lifekeeper murmured in Novo's language.

It was beautiful, even if it made Novo wondered briefly who would name their child such a thing. He didn't ask though, not now in this perfect peace. "Novo," he said instead. "That's my name."

A low, thoughtful chirping sound in the back of Lifekeeper's throat. He said it quietly, warmly, full of all the affection Novo could ever hope for. "Novo."


End file.
